Custom Frontpage Posts

Okay, I’m working on a plugin that will allow me to select from the admin side a group of posts that will be displayed on the homepage. Currently I have it set up like this.

new table called wp_homepage

columns “item_id”, and “item_order”

6 rows.

I want to be able to create a filter that will make sure that the only posts that show up on the homepage are ones that have their ID in the “item_id” column of the new table, and then they will appear according to the order of “item_order”.

I have been looking at the “showfrontpage” plugin and it seems VERY close to what I need to accomplish. It basically checks to see if there is a customfield for the post ID set to false and then doesn’t display that post. I want to take this a step further and allow control of the homepage from one single admin page so you can reorder and remove posts from the homepage.

I just can’t seem to get there yet. I don’t know if I’ve explained this correctly.

Hopefully someone out there can point me in the right direction.